Serengeti Sunrise: Serengeti Shifters, Book 4

by Vivi Andrews

  Which would have been easier if she wouldn’t insist on throwing herself toward every hint of danger just to prove she could.

  “Zoe,” he began again, trying to make his voice sound reasonable rather than frustrated. “Would it really be so terrible to be my mate? You know you can always depend on me to watch your back.”

  “What about your back?” she asked without looking up from the tiny device she was fiddling with on the post. Her tone was hard and ruthless. “Do I get to watch it?”

  Tyler hesitated, knowing his instinctive response of hell no wasn’t going to get him the reaction he wanted. “If it were necessary to have someone watch my back…”

  Zoe’s head snapped up and her eyes narrowed at the evasion. “Bullshit. If I tried to do anything to defend you, you’d probably tie me to your bed for a week.”

  Tyler couldn’t deny the idea held some appeal.

  “If I were to mate with some lion—if, mind you—it would have to go both ways. Equals.”

  “It does go both ways.” He protected her body, and she protected his heart. If anything happened to her…

  “God, Tyler, you are such a crappy liar.”

  He flinched, feeling his future with Zoe slipping away at the distance in her voice. “You have to understand—”

  “Oh I get it. The idea of me being hurt makes you feel sick and you’re convinced the only thing that will keep me safe is you standing there ready to take any bullet aimed at me.”

  His breath left him. “Yes. That’s it.”

  “Did you ever stop to think that I feel exactly the same way? That your complete lack of trust in my ability to watch your back is as frustrating as it is insulting? How would you feel if I left you chained to the stove while I went waltzing off into God-knows-what? I’m not asking you to stop protecting me, Tyler. I know that would go against every alpha instinct you have. I’m just asking you to let me protect you. We have to be equals in this or I’m going to end up trying to kill you someday—and it’ll be self-defense because you couldn’t stop smothering me. I’m not like Ava. If you want to date some delicate flower, you need to look elsewhere.”

  He didn’t want to look elsewhere. He wanted Zoe because of her strength, the fight that was a part of her down to her soul, but he’d been denying her that part. He’d admired her fierceness, her power as a lioness, but then he’d tried to bind her spirit.

  And he didn’t know how not to. If her definition of compromise put her in danger, he didn’t think he could do it.

  She must have read the truth on his face. Her hands fisted, her expression locking down to a flat, emotionless mask that looked so wrong on her expressive face.

  “It isn’t going to work,” she said softly. “We have to end this now, before things get any more complicated.”

  “No.” The word sprang out of him with the same force as his claws that suddenly unsheathed. He never shifted involuntarily, never lost control, but the thought of Zoe just giving up and walking away pierced right through his shields and stabbed his heart.

  “You don’t get to dictate to me,” she retorted. Her eyes were bright with anger, the vivid expression back in her face, but her hands were deft and gentle as she handled the sensors, never pausing in her work. “I never agreed to take you as my mate and even if I had, it wouldn’t be a free pass for you to run my life.” She snapped the cover closed on the post sensors and swept her tools up. She stalked toward him, challenge in every line of her body. “I’m never going to be the meek little woman who sits obediently by with her fucking needlepoint while you ride off into battle.” She flung her tools through the open truck window onto the bench seat, but didn’t move to climb in, turning to snarl up at him, “And I am never going to take orders from you.”

  Tyler started toward her, intending to give the words kiss her into submission new definition, when something sharp jabbed into his shoulder. He hesitated, raising a hand to the sting, blinking as the world slowed and the colors of the pasture bled into one another before his eyes like an impressionist painting. What the hell?

  “Tyler?” Zoe’s voice sounded like it was coming from an out-of-tune radio, soft, then suddenly loud then soft again, and all battling against the static that filled his ears.

  “Run,” he grunted, as his knees gave way. Whatever drug they’d shot him with, it was fast working.

  His cheek smacked into the ground hard. He couldn’t lift his arms to brace for the impact. His vision was still functioning—blurred though it was—as all the rest of his motor functions shut down one by one. He saw Zoe’s boots running away from him—obeying him for once in her life, thank God—but the steps were slowing, staggering, and she didn’t make it ten yards before she slumped to the ground.

  No.

  A surge of something vicious and powerful ran through his blood. His vision cleared. He still had no feeling in his arms, but he managed to move them even though they felt like they belonged to someone else. Rolling slightly to the side, he shoved himself up. Half-crawling, half-dragging himself, he inched toward Zoe.

  Protect your mate.

  Another sting pierced his neck. Tyler lifted his dead-weight hand and yanked the dart out before the tranquilizer could find its way into his bloodstream. But enough of the damn poison had gotten in to send him crashing back to the ground.

  Zoe, Zoe, Zoe. His eyes stayed locked on her unmoving form in front of him as he willed his body to fight the drug. She’d become his mantra, his reason for being. They could take him, but he had to get her out of here.

  His eyes were still open, his hearing still staticky but functioning, when a pair of footsteps approached.

  “Jesus, he’s still conscious.”

  “Hit him again.”

  “Will that damage him? I already gave him enough to take down an elephant. He said a breeding pair is no good if one is damaged.”

  “Do you want this big fucker waking up before we get him back to the lab? Hit him a-fucking-gain.”

  “Fine, but you get to explain it to the boss if he’s sterile or brain-dead.”

  The second man snorted. “Just don’t aim for his junk. Brain-dead isn’t a problem.”

  Tyler didn’t feel where the next dart hit him. He only knew it had when a yellow fog swamped him and the world faded away.

  Chapter Ten

  The voices were the first thing that infringed on Zoe’s consciousness. Long before she was awake enough to move, she heard them, broken riddles that faded in and out and meant nothing in her fuzzy cotton-candy world.

  “…can’t keep him under. Nothing in the data suggests a male of his size should be able to…”

  “…responding to the hormone yet? Check her temperature again.”

  “…don’t think the wall will hold if he attacks it again…”

  “…shouldn’t she be shifting? The data clearly states within four hours of injection…”

  “…you wanna try putting him in restraints, be my guest. I’m not going in there…”

  “…running out of sedative…”

  Sedative. That explained the IV she could feel in her arm. She was drugged. Was she in the hospital? Lying on her back, she could be in a hospital bed. Had she been in an accident? Emergency surgery? The voices didn’t sound like the pride doctor. If she wasn’t at the pride, where was she?

  The last thing she remembered…huh. What was the last thing she remembered?

  Tyler’s face pushed to the front of her fuzziness. Tyler. She remembered the shock on his face as he told her to run, the sickening dread and fear that had hardened in her stomach as he’d collapsed at her feet, the sting in her upper arm. She remembered running for help, though everything in her screamed to stay and guard him. Then nothing.

  Chills shot through her blood, but Zoe couldn’t let terror freeze her. They’d been taken. Were they being held together? Was he all right? Was she?

  She flexed her muscles as much as she could without moving, careful not to alert their captors that she wa
s awake. She tested her extremities. Everything seemed to be working, but she felt…odd. Achy, hot, and like her skin had been stretched too tight.

  “I can tell you’re awake.” The voice was feminine and high-pitched, young. Not one of the voices.

  Zoe opened her eyes. The room was tiny and poorly lit, the walls and ceiling corrugated metal, like a container from a cargo ship. But they were in west Texas, or at least they had been when they were captured, not exactly close to a port. The room barely fit the narrow twin bed Zoe was strapped to and a pile of unidentifiable medical equipment.

  The girl who’d spoken stood in the corner, as far as she could get from Zoe without leaving the room. She was older than Zoe’d guessed from her voice, but still couldn’t be much more than twenty-five. Thin and nervous, she clutched a water bottle against her breastbone, her wide eyes fixed on Zoe as if she might leap from the bed and eat her—which she would, if she weren’t strapped to the bed tight enough to restrict circulation.

  “Where am I?” Zoe tried to say, but her voice came out a ragged croak. Her throat was raw, as if she hadn’t swallowed for days. How long had she been out? She felt nauseous. From lack of food? Or the aftereffects of the drug? She hadn’t completely shaken it off. The room still seemed to lurch and sway around her.

  “Are you thirsty?” the girl asked, though she showed no inclination to give Zoe the water.

  Zoe ignored the question as beyond idiotic. “What do you want?”

  She fidgeted with the bottle. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you. They only let me check your vitals.”

  A low growl and a shuffling thud sounded through the wall. Zoe’s heart rate quickened. Tyler.

  The girl made a keening noise and scuttled away from the metal barrier. “You need to get him to calm down,” she whispered urgently. “They want him alive because they’ve never been able to capture a breedable pair before, but if they can’t keep him sedated, they’ll kill him. You have to make him stop.”

  “Untie me and I will.”

  She shook her head frantically. “I can’t.”

  One of the voices filtered through the wall. “…half dose should do her. Use the rest on him.”

  The girl shuddered. She was terrified. Of Tyler, of Zoe, but also of them.

  “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. You need to use your mate-link thingy to tell him you’re okay, or they’re going to shoot him with something other than a tranq.”

  Mate-link thing? “We don’t have—”

  “Candice!” A piece of the wall slid open and a slim, dark-haired man with a ponytail appeared in the opening, holding a syringe. “Out. Now.”

  The girl sucked in a sharp breath and darted past the ponytail guy.

  He advanced toward Zoe, never looking at her face, his eyes flicking over her body like she was nothing more than an animal or a specimen on a table. Which to him, she probably was. Zoe jerked against her restraints, baring sharp teeth and releasing her claws in a partial shift, but it didn’t do any good.

  The plunger on the syringe pressed down. The world blacked out.

  The last thing Zoe heard was the unmistakable roar of an enraged lion. Numb lips twitched in a smile of vicious satisfaction. They’d messed with the wrong lion.

  Tyler was coming for her.

  Tyler swam up through a yellow haze, desperately clawing his way to consciousness even though he couldn’t remember why he felt such violent urgency. He knew only that he needed to be awake. To be strong.

  He heard a snarling roar and realized dimly that it was coming from him. His fur felt sticky—blood?—and his claws were extended with the awareness of a threat. He scented the air, trying to identify the danger.

  Metal, chemicals, human sweat, a fading scent of onions. And beneath it all, familiar as his own heartbeat, Zoe.

  Protect your mate.

  There it was. That’s why he needed to be sharp. Why he needed to fight. He had to keep her safe. His mate, his life.

  And they’d dared touch her.

  Tyler launched himself at a wall already heavily gouged, the metal yielding like warm butter beneath his claws. He heard voices shouting on the other side, frantic and panicked. Good. Let them piss themselves with fear. Tyler roared again, pushed beyond reason and violence into blind carnage.

  The room jerked. Only when it slammed to a stop, throwing him sideways against the far wall, did he realize the entire structure had been moving. As his lion leapt again at the sides of his cage, savagery in every swipe of his paws, the small part of him, buried deep but still capable of rational thought, picked up on the telling details.

  The room was claustrophobically tight, no room for a running start. They had to be in a trailer of some kind. If the bastards had been dragging a camper all over, it would explain why the pride hadn’t been able to track their movements to any one spot. It also meant he had no idea where they were and only instinct telling him he hadn’t already been separated from Zoe. Instinct and scent. She was either near or they’d doused the trailer in the scent of her distress just to send him into a frenzy.

  Dimly he heard panicked voices seeping through the holes his claws were punching in the metal.

  “…used the last of the sedative an hour ago. He’s shaking it off at four times the rate the research suggests,” a tenor whined.

  “I don’t give a shit. Get a hold of the situation!” a dark, authoritative voice barked. “I can’t drive with a thousand pounds of enraged lion rattling around back here. Put him under or fucking put him down, but get control, dammit! We can always catch another male, but I refuse to jeopardize the female. We’ve never been able to experiment on one before—”

  Tyler stopped listening. The female. Zoe. Like hell they were going to experiment on his mate. His humanity receded under the crushing need to reach Zoe. To protect her, no matter the cost. Adrenaline coursed through his blood, thickening it until each heartbeat was heavy with angry purpose.

  He coiled back on his haunches and sprang at the door. Jagged metal edges screamed against one another, more piercing than nails on a chalkboard, as the frame gave way. The deadbolts held, but the frame ripped out of its moorings. The heavy metal panel fell into the room beyond, a feral lion riding it down.

  Tyler spun in a circle, his tail lashing out behind him as he scanned for threats. He’d fallen into a compact office of some kind, tightly packed with filing drawers and locked cabinets. It was empty, but held two additional doors. The one next to where he’d been held smelled sterile, with distinct human scents—lab. That’s where the men behind the voices were hiding. But the door on the opposite side of the little office smelled so familiar the fur on his shoulders stood on end. Zoe.

  Anger called him toward the lab, but need drove him across the room. The deadbolts holding Zoe’s cell shut required thumbs, but for a moment he couldn’t shift. Rage locked him in his lion form. Tyler planted his paws on the metal floor, struggling to calm himself enough to change. There wasn’t time to waste. The scientists must have heard the crash. They would know he was loose. They’d be coming.

  But his body refused to obey. Tyler, who never lost control, was at the mercy of his lion and the lion wouldn’t rest until he’d ripped out some throats and lapped up the warm blood that spurted out.

  The small part of him that still possessed some shred of human awareness appreciated the catch-22. His feral need to protect his mate prevented him from freeing her, but the man’s frustration was a dim echo of the lion’s obsession.

  The sound of the lab door opening behind him spun him snarling to face the new threat. Time was up. The lion roared his pleasure. He would have blood.

  Zoe came awake to the same sound that had followed her into darkness—a familiar ragged roar. But much closer now. Tyler was right outside the door. He’d gotten loose.

  He’s coming for me.

  The sharp comfort that thought inspired was disconcerting. Was she a damsel in distress? Did she just lie there and wait to be resc
ued? Tyler would always come for her, her certainty of that fact was unshakeable, but she refused to be declawed by that certainty. She was a lioness, dammit. She didn’t wait for a white knight.

  Even if she was still dopey from sedative and strapped to a bed. She wasn’t without resources.

  Zoe tested the restraints, but they were no looser than before. She was going to have to shift. It would destroy her clothes and hurt like hell—changing the shape of her body while restrained felt like her joints had been repeatedly jerked out of their sockets and rammed back in again. But she wasn’t afraid of pain.

  Zoe reached for her lioness form. There was a minute delay, thanks to the sedative still slowing her reflexes, but when it came, the change ripped through her hard. The force of the shift shredded the leather of the restraints, and she gave a feline hiss of pain. Shaking off the remnants of leather, she sprang to the foot of the bed on four paws then abruptly shifted back again, coming to her human form with her arms wrapped around her middle like she could hold the broken pieces of herself together.

  “Shit.” Yeah, it definitely hurt. Lurching to her feet, she staggered from the wave of dizziness that always accompanied changing form twice in quick succession. She groped at the door, fumbling with the knob for several seconds before her fuzzy thoughts cleared enough for her to realize it was locked. Brilliant, Zoe.

  She was doing a pretty shitty job of rescuing herself so far.

  She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d eaten, but it was too long to risk another shift—she’d just pass out in lioness form. Helplessness churned sickeningly in her gut. Then a pair of gunshots echoed loudly in the room beyond her cage.

  “Tyler!” she screamed. Claws sprang from her fingertips, her teeth sharpening to fangs as she barely stopped a full shift from incapacitating her.

  A fraction of a second later the door sprang open, and Zoe saw the blood.

  It wasn’t the pain of the bullet punching through his shoulder that brought Tyler back to humanity. It was the sound of Zoe’s voice screaming through the door.